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Mesoamerican calendars

Stelae 12 and 13 from Monte Albán, provisionally dated to 500-400 BCE, showing what is thought to be one of the earliest calendric representations in Mesoamerica.[1]

The calendrical systems devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, primarily a 260-day year, were used in religious observances and social rituals, such as divination.

These calendars have been dated to early as ca. 1100 BCE. By 500 BCE at the latest, the essentials were fully defined and functional. 260-day calendars are still used in the Guatemalan highlands,[2] Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico.[3]

The importance of aboriginal calendars in ritual and other aspects of Mesoamerican life was noted by many missionary priests, travelers, and colonial administrators, and later by ethnographers who described and recorded the cultures of contemporary Mesoamerican ethnic groups.[4]

  1. ^ Marcus (1992)
  2. ^ Tedlock, Barbara, Time and the Highland Maya Revised edition (1992 Page 1) "Scores of indigenous Guatemalan communities, principally those speaking the Mayan languages known as Ixil, Mam, Pokomchí, and Quiché, keep the 260-day cycle and (in many cases) the ancient solar cycle as well (chapter 4)."
  3. ^ Miles, Susanna W, "An Analysis of the Modern Middle American Calendars: A Study in Conservation." In Acculturation in the Americas. Edited by Sol Tax, p. 273. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
  4. ^ Harvey M. Bricker, and Victoria R. Bricker. "Correlation of Calendars." In David Carrasco (ed). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. Vol 1. New York : Oxford University Press, 2001ISBN 9780195108156

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